Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association in its series Annual Conference 2015 (Muenster): Economic Development - Theory and Policy with number 112834. -- Abstract -- We explore empirically how capital inflows into the US and financial deregulation within the United States interacted in driving the run-up (and subsequent decline) in US housing prices over the period 1990-2010. To obtain an ex ante measure of financial liberalization, we focus on the history of interstate-banking deregulation during the 1980s, i.e. prior to the large net capital inflows into the US from China and other emerging economies. Our results suggest a long shadow of deregulation: in states that opened their banking markets to out-of-state banks earlier, house prices were more sensitive to capital inflows. We provide evidence that global imbalances were a major positive funding shock for US wide banks: different from local banks, these banks held a geographically diversified portfolio of mortgages which allowed them to tap the global demand for safe assets by issuing private-label safe assets backed by the country-wide US housing market. This, in turn, allowed them to expand mortgage lending and lower interest rates, driving up housing prices. -- downloaded via iPhone to DBOX

Abstract
This paper is a first attempt to garner the theory and evidence on the political economy of the first wave of financial liberalisation during the nineteenth and early twentieth century, and of its demise after World War I. Not everyone gained from the process of globalisation (of trade, labour, and finance), which brought about important changes in the structure of the economy and the distribution of income in nations across the world. This paper explores how the economic incentives generated by these dislocations translated, through the political system, into choices about openness to foreign capital and financial integration. The period before World War I is remarkable by the almost absence of restrictions on cross-border capital flows, which may explain the little attention it has received in the historical literature, compared to the extensive study of trade protectionism in this period. After the War, many countries experimented with capital controls which varied in nature and intensity and were intensified during the Depression. Despite the attempt made here to reconcile these stylized facts to models of political economy, the analysis requires a better empirical foundation and some suggestions for further research are also proposed. - Downloaded via iPhone to DBOX.

Americans everywhere struggle to build strong financial futures for themselves and their families. The new book, What It's Worth, provides a roadmap for what families, communities and our nation can do to move forward on the path to financial well-being.
Collection of essays by people working on financial inclusion, asset-building etc. - downloaded via iPhone to DBOX

This post follows discussions of the norms sincerity, reciprocity and charity in financial markets. It suggests that the success of Quaker finance, that funded… Tracks the importance of Quaker-owned banks to the development of UK financial system - the number of big-name banking families with Quaker founders is striking. Their personalized methods of working on reputation (theirs and their borrowers) based on shared standards of probity and transparency, disciplined by membership in the Quaker community - allowed them to not only grow in the loan business, but become big in the bills market. The Quaker method of collecting views re appropriate moral life practices, which were documented and circulated among the members - and set mutual expectations for ethical practices, including areas like bookkeeping and full disclosure. The Quaker firms were central to the system of country banks, capable of providing liquidity to halt bank runs, wind down problem institutions etc. Their bills business didn't survive the switch to the Bank of England becoming lender of last resort in the 1844 crisis. And their information advantages don't seem to have remained a competitive advantage as it had been in the pre Napoleonic_Wars era.

Bitcoin is an online communication protocol that facilitates the use of a virtual currency, including electronic payments. Bitcoin's rules were designed by engineers with no apparent influence from lawyers or regulators. Bitcoin is built on a transaction log that is distributed across a network of participating computers. It includes mechanisms to reward honest participation, to bootstrap acceptance by early adopters, and to guard against concentrations of power. Bitcoin's design allows for irreversible transactions, a prescribed path of money creation over time, and a public transaction history. Anyone can create a Bitcoin account, without charge and without any centralized vetting procedure—or even a requirement to provide a real name. Collectively, these rules yield a system that is understood to be more flexible, more private, and less amenable to regulatory oversight than other forms of payment—though as we discuss, all these benefits face important limits. Bitcoin is of interest to economists as a virtual currency with potential to disrupt existing payment systems and perhaps even monetary systems. This article presents the platform's design principles and properties for a nontechnical audience; reviews its past, present, and future uses; and points out risks and regulatory issues as Bitcoin interacts with the conventional financial system and the real economy. -- downloaded pdf to Note

Phishing for Phools therefore strikes a radically new direction in economics, based on the intuitive idea that markets both give and take away. Akerlof and Shiller bring this idea to life through dozens of stories that show how phishing affects everyone, in almost every walk of life. We spend our money up to the limit, and then worry about how to pay the next month’s bills. The financial system soars, then crashes. We are attracted, more than we know, by advertising. Our political system is distorted by money. We pay too much for gym memberships, cars, houses, and credit cards. Drug companies ingeniously market pharmaceuticals that do us little good, and sometimes are downright dangerous. Phishing for Phools explores the central role of manipulation and deception in fascinating detail in each of these areas and many more. It thereby explains a paradox: why, at a time when we are better off than ever before in history, all too many of us are leading lives of quiet desperation. At the same time, the book tells stories of individuals who have stood against economic trickery—and how it can be reduced through greater knowledge, reform, and regulation. -- Intro downloaded pdf to Note

Sáni Zou, Romain Morel, Thomas Spencer, Ian Cochran, and Michel Colombier -- Fixing Climate Governance Policy Brief No. 5 -- Today, the financial sector is exposed to the physical risks associated with climate change and the impact of climate policies. Securing global financial and economic stability and scaling up low-carbon, climate-resilient investments are not conflicting, but rather mutually reinforcing, objectives. The fifth policy brief in the Fixing Climate Governance series argues that while crucial, classic climate policies do not appear sufficient to address the challenges from climate change that the financial sector is facing. Policies affecting and instruments matching the demand side and supply side of finance need to be aligned with climate objectives to efficiently shift investments toward a low-carbon, climate-resilient economy. Once the link between climate change and the mandates of international financial sector governance and regulatory institutions is understood, the existing tool kits and processes of these institutions — common standards, principles and guidelines with various levels of legal force, country surveillance and technical assistance — present entry points to mainstream climate-related risks and opportunities into their core operations. -- didn't download

English translation March 2014 -- http://www.booksandideas.net/When-French-Banks-Encounter-their.html -- Most banks have now abandoned their previous function of providing advice. Instead, they view their services as products designed to maximize profits. They have started invoking the client’s autonomy as a way of passing on the risk of financial exclusion to their customers. In what ways have bank employees reacted to these new circumstances? -- Georges Gloukoviezoff est docteur en économie et spécialiste des questions d’inclusion financière des particuliers. Il est membre de l’Observatoire national de la pauvreté et de l’exclusion sociale. Il a publié en octobre 2010 aux Presses Universitaires de France "L’Exclusion bancaire. Le Lien social à l’épreuve de la rentabilité". Il tient également un blog sur la page d’Alternatives Economiques. -- downloaded French version as pdf to Note

Banks were not always as mismatched as today.Till the 19th century, bank lending to the private sector was meant to be primarily for short-term, self-liquidating, trade-related working capital, especially in the guise of ‘real bills’, bills of exchange fnancing trade. This was true since the emergence of banks in the 15th century, supporting merchants in their long-distance trade. This approach persisted in the Anglo-American tradition, where banks discounted promissory notes and held the rest of the portfolio in easily saleable securities, especially Consols. This enabled a credible promise to depositors, as banks’ assets were either short-term, or easily sold, with little maturity mismatch. -- And then came Continental universal banking, employed to play catch up -- and then with disintermediation, and the need for banks to find other business, and securitization, and they became hostage to the long-wave boom and bust of real estate -- Land is scarce and its availability is fxed. In other words, real estate value has a large pure rent component. Thus in any expansion, real estate prices generally rise faster than consumer prices, and become prone to bubbles and busts. To avoid socialising risk taking, what is needed is an intermediation process where the fnancing comes from investors that assume the bulk of such risk. We call for solutions that ensure such risk bearing by focusing on two principles: much greater maturity matching and no insured deposit funding. These goals may be achieved by various means. One avenue is to securitise mortgages with little maturity transformation, such as those funded by bond or pension funds. Another is to create new intermediaries providing mortgage loans where the lender shares in the appreciation, while assuming some risk against the occasional bust. This may be seen as a shift towards the principles of Islamic banking, but it is also a return to tradition as in the early days of banking. -- downloaded pdf to Note

Problems of regulation appear whenever financial innovations change the ways capital markets operate. This column describes the 18th century emergence of the inconvertible banknote, a "toxic asset” ended by government regulation. The lesson is that free financial markets promote financial innovation, but government must provide adequate regulation keeping the market on track. -- downloaded page as pdf to Note

Small and medium enterprises are engines of economic growth. But what kind of market structure is more conducive to financing these enterprises? This column argues that different types of bank, applying different types of lending technology and organisational structures can all play a vital role in financing them. They're working with a big data set they developed -- shows quite different lending technologies as between foreign and domestic, but similar outcomes in volume of lending, conditions, pricing etc. The big differences are cross couhtry, where thoorer, less developed suffer from less access to credit for investment, higher pricing, etc -- which reflects overall economic conditions and business environment. -- nice use of data -- downloaded page as pdf to Note

Via Tim Taylor, a quotation from Luigi Zingales ("watch video of the lecture or read the talk at his website"): "While there is no doubt that a developed economy needs a sophisticated financial sector, at the current state of knowledge there is no theoretical reason or empirical evidence to support the notion that all the growth of the financial sector in the last forty years has been beneficial to society. In fact, we have both theoretical reasons and empirical evidence to claim that a component has been pure rent seeking. ..." -- downloaded pdf to Note of Zingale paper

Andrew Lo - Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) - Sloan School of Management; Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) - Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL); National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) *--* Thomas J. Brennan - Northwestern University School of Law. **--** A common theme in the regulation of financial institutions and transactions is leverage constraints. Although such constraints are implemented in various ways — from minimum net capital rules to margin requirements to credit limits — the basic motivation is the same: to limit the potential losses of certain counterparties. However, the emergence of dynamic trading strategies, derivative securities, and other financial innovations poses new challenges to these constraints. We propose a simple analytical framework for specifying leverage constraints that addresses this challenge by explicitly linking the likelihood of financial loss to the behavior of the financial entity under supervision and prevailing market conditions. An immediate implication of this framework is that not all leverage is created equal, and any fixed numerical limit can lead to dramatically different loss probabilities over time and across assets and investment styles. This framework can also be used to investigate the macroprudential policy implications of microprudential regulations through the general-equilibrium impact of leverage constraints on market parameters such as volatility and tail probabilities. -- Pages in PDF File: 36 -- Leverage, Liquidity, Financial Regulation, Capital Requirements, Macroprudential Policies, Net Capital Rules -- downloaded pdf to Note